Anyone else been contacted by Advancedsupport.com?

organic_wanabe

I had a strange phonecall earlier from someone at Advancedsupport.com saying that they were authorised by windows to contact me because my secure socket layer (whatever that is!) needs protection from infections and junk. He got me to do a Windows R then 'inf' and then 'prefetch unwanted' to show me all the infections that were multiplying and said that over 40% of my disc was corrupted. He then got me to do a Windows R then 'eventvwr' to show that I had been sent messages to inform me, which I had not received, and he said that would be because I had a pop-up blocker. I thought I may be adequately protected as I have 'Virgin Media Security' and my son installed 'Avira3' but now I am worried. I know he was trying to sell me something and said he would call back on Wednesday to 'clean up my system' and tell me the cost for protection.

However, I am now worried. Just over a month ago my computer was going really slowly and so I took it into a local company and paid for them to clean everything up. It came back like new. I would hate to think that I am leaving myself open to problems, and that the same will happen again, but I really don't want to pay over-the-odds for protection. I am a techo-phobe, so wondered if anyone could give me some advice. Can I trust what Advancedsupport.com are telling me? How are they likely to have got my details? :eek:

Any assistance would be much appreciated.

fwor

organic_wanabe wrote: »

Can I trust what Advancedsupport.com are telling me?

No. It's a scam. What's not clear is how they have obtained your details, but there has been some speculation that they get the data from stolen customer databases - possibly by contract staff in data centres who then sell the data on to scammers, who mainly seem to be based in India at the moment.

If you allowed them remote access to your PC, I would be very concerned about what they have installed on it, as they may still have remote control over it. At the very least I would do a malware scan (as described in the sticky at the top of this section).

Nilrem

It's a common scam - they have zero way to locate users of windows, what they are doing is cold calling people, using scare tactics then scamming them into giving them your card details.

They are doing it under several names, and i think there is a thread about it called "log me in" or something in the vent forum (they often use the legitimate logmein service to make it easier to get you to let them remotely access your pc).

bat999

Read all about it here:-http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/18/phone-scam-india-call-centres/print

organic_wanabe

Oh dear. Have I allowed them remote access by doing what I described above? I hope not but I will run a scan just in case. When he said he would put me through to a technican so he could help me clean up my system, I said that I would not do anything else until I had spoken to my son. That is when he said he'd call back next week. I did not enter any code or anything else. However, he knew enough to mention Avira 3 and I told him about Virgin Security. Should I download anything else to ensure I am fully protected?

Lokolo

No, he will ask you to install remote desktop stuff so he can then access it, do not do this.

Just tell them to f*** off next time.

spud17

On a different note, I don't think that you should have 'Virgin Media Security' and Avira installed together.

Sure someone will correct me, , but I believe VMS is a poor downgraded version of Kaspersky, and will probably conflict with Avira.

If so, I'd remove VMS.

organic_wanabe

Thanks for all the above useful comments. I did a malware check and it only found one suspect thing called 'highjacker' which I removed. Thank goodness for the helpful people on this site.